The Life and Times of an Affiliate Widow

So, almost a week has passed since I read about the now infamous awards ceremony. In that week I’ve been told that I’m a dinosaur, I need to ‘embrace’ change and to alter virtually all my ethics and get more ‘corporate’. Well, where do I start? There have been many blogs, comments and posts about the awards, the buy/at sale (like does anyone apart from their puppets or is that muppets really care) so I held back for two reasons, to gain perspective and to calm down.

To use a quote from Existem’s Claire Hoyland’s blog ‘The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance’- ok, so we all know that over the past 10 years I’ve been involved in this industry we have seen lots of changes and have been aware of those changes, have we accepted all those changes? Damn right we haven’t! We were aware of spyware and did we accept it - like hell we did. Change and acceptance do not have to go hand in hand, at times there is no place for change and definitely not for acceptance. What really infuriates me about all this ‘change is for the better’ attitude is that some of us were investing our time, money and energy in Affiliate Marketing when a lot of these so called ‘corporate’ bods were still in high school and very wet behind the ears. Seriously guys would you tell your grandmother how to suck eggs? I doubt it somehow, she’d give you a clip around the ear.

We can all dig up quotes which we think will back us up but it doesn’t make us right and anybody with an iota of common sense could pull it apart without even trying, facts are what we base our industry on, facts and stats. There will never be a time when everybody will agree or sing from the same song sheet, life isn’t like that, but, you have to have respect for the people you work with - directly or indirectly. You also have to have respect for the friends you make and not to plough through their beliefs and feelings like they’re just an annoyance standing in your way. You have to respect your community or the people that built you up will get very pissed off and bring you back down with a huge bump. I have been very hurt this week by the ‘goings on’ and actually being told by someone I respect a hell of a lot (from a gobby cow like myself that’s a bit deep) that there isn’t a place for me in the ‘new era’ of affiliate marketing, that I am not to be trusted to make decisions as they wouldn’t be for the good of the industry - all because I challenge people. Is it a bad thing to NOT accept what I’m being told all the time? Is it wrong to have an opinion? Am I too old or set in my ways?

I’ve never been a ‘yes’ man / woman and I pride myself on that fact. I will also stand up for what I believe in not what I’m told I should believe in just because it is the best way to move the industry forward. WTF? In my personal opinion the best way to move the industry forward is to have complete transparency across all networks, agencies and affiliates, STOP all closed PPC BNB groups and make the affiliate space an even ground for all those wishing to partake in it. Kick out all the rogue elements, be they Merchants, affiliates or networks, there really is no place for them.

As for the Buy.at thing, I’m just not interested in them anymore.

Last Thursday 24th January I attended my first meeting of the AMC (Affiliate Marketing Council) which was held at the offices of the IAB (Internet Marketing Bureau). As one of two possible three affiliates there I was surprised no-one else had turned up, however I was surprised at the informality of the meeting and I can say I did enjoy it, especially the beers in the pub on the corner afterwards. The next meeting will be at the same place on Thursday 28th February, it would be nice if more affiliates and merchants could make it (only one merchant present).

Here is a link for the Affiliate Marketing Handbook which was ‘put together’ by the AMC last year, I told Dan I would post the link on my blog, it’s taken me a week but in my defence I’ve had a very busy week. I know they worked very hard on it and it is full of excellent information - especially the links on the last but one page ;-).

I think a lot of people were shocked when Next won the award for Best New Merchant at the Expo in October, James Little started a thread on it on the forum. Now after all the reductions in commissions and not only what happened yesterday, but also their zero communication by email or on the forum I feel the right thing to do would be to revoke the award, they are not worthy of it.

Seriously, what do Next bring to the affiliate space - apart from demands and hassle? Do we need it or them?

With all the talk about how bad Commission Junction are from both Kirsty and John I thought I’d throw my 2 pence worth into the hat. I can honestly say that we’ve not had any service from CJ since Nicky Iapino left all those years ago. CJ has got so bad that if it were an animal you’d do the humane thing and have it put down. They have no idea how to talk to or even respond to the simplest query from an affiliate that I have to say if they treated merchants as shoddily as they’ve treated us they wouldn’t have any merchants left on the network.

One example a few months back was when I called them after receiving an email from the ‘Network Quality’ team (which is a contradiction in itself), the person I needed to speak to was ‘on the other line’ I asked to hold and was rudely told that I couldn’t as she needed to use the phone (!), obviously they only have one phone in the office, I re-iterated that I wanted to hold so, instead of putting me on hold she hung up on me. I called back and said she must’ve cut me off by mistake only to be told that no, she hung up on me because she needed to use the phone. The scary thing is she didn’t realise she’d done anything wrong and people phoning up were just a nuisance. So, instead of being a further nuisance I’ve taken the majority of my business elsewhere.

To quote a newspaper from years back - ‘Could the last person to leave Commission Junction please turn out the lights’

Today whilst browsing through the blogs on A4U, I came across this Dodgy Bidder - Name & Shame? I, being me, put me 2 pence in. Almost immediately I was pinged on MSN with a ‘have you seen this?’ re the blog, ‘Yes, I have I’ve commented on it’ was my reply, ‘why do you ask?’ I was absolutely horrified at the answer - ‘because the word is it’s you’. Now, I know I’m not perfect but for one I’m female and this quite clearly is about a bloke - he mentions the word ‘him’, two - I’m not sure I’m high profile, three - I tend not to break the rules where brand bidding is concerned PROVIDING I’m given all the information when signing up for a program and the merchant or agency doesn’t change the goalposts without adequate notice or in some cases no notice at all and four - I can categorically state that I do NOT ‘gripes about “dodgy affiliates” bidding on brand terms and giving the industry a bad name - my pet hate is Closed Bidding Groups that are not disclosed on Networks (but that’s something I’ve bored you all with before and I’m sure I will again. Within 15 minutes I receive an email from TD saying the usual stuff - take it down or within 24 hours we’ll stand you against a wall and shoot you, so confused as at this point I don’t know it’s me, I log into TD and check the program information. This is what it says :

Sponsored Keywords/Adwords:

Important: We allow affiliates to buy sponsored keyword terms relating to the Jessops brand including miss spells, but excluding the exact term JESSOPS.We allow affiliates to buy sponsored keywords/adwords on search engines, so long as they are clearly marked as affiliate links (”affiliate” or “aff” in the supporting text). However, we DO NOT permit affiliates to buy keywords relating to our competitors brand names or trademarks. e.g. “Dixons”, or “CamerasDirect”, etc. Any affiliates who do so will be removed.

Okay - I’m sticking to the rules on this program and even have the word -[Jessops] in as  negative exact match, why do people think it’s me, why have I just received the email from TD saying it’s me and why is Rob B now seemingly back tracking on what he had earlier said.

The moral of this story is ‘Get the facts right before you accuse people of wrong doing’ Several times we have been wrongly accused of deliberately ‘Brand Bidding’ but never have the accusers been proved right. Please don’t shoot yourself in the foot with comments like these :

It isn’t really my style to do this, but why should this affiliate get away with these dodgy tactics while pretending to be white as white at the same time?

Today I took part in a ‘modcast’, which is a podcast with some of the moderators on A4U. Fraser Edwards thought it would be a bit different from his normal podcasts and roped a few of us in to do it. Well, I was a little nervous at first but as I do like the sound of my own voice, I was off. It turns out that I don’t actually like the sound of my own voice - I sound awful, and you can really hear my Welsh accent in there too! On the other side of the coin it was so much fun, I really enjoyed myself, it was like we were all in pub chatting like we normally do when we meet up, except for the fact there was no alcohol involved - well except for Paul, but that’s another story!

The podcast is live on Fraser’s blog so go have a listen to our ramblings and opinions and please discuss what you think of what was said. If successful we may do it again, you never know ;-).

My good friend Jason has posted a thought on the forum asking ‘why network staff back “social” blogs but not one’s with real issues about AM written by affiliates?’ He is of course referring to another newbie blogger, like myself, Robert B. Now while I’m sure Robert is a very nice guy and this is not in any way a dig at him, he’s blogged about how wonderful Mal is and of course shot straight to the ‘Top of the Blogs’ being backed by everyone at Buy.at and their mothers, grandmothers, next door neighbours, etc (I know I am liable to exaggeration at times), yet these same people never back a blog about Affiliate Marketing! Are networks too PC or are they a little bit scared of backing a controversial post? If affiliate A posted about network X would it be backed by any staff from network YZ? I doubt it very much, maybe because the way staff move around, maybe because today’s competitor could be tomorrows boss? maybe it’s simply because they lack the balls! Of course this doesn’t apply to all as some network staff are very supportive of affiliates issues and will back certain blogs.

What are your views on this?

 Oops, found this saved and I thought I’d already posted it! 

Ok, so last week is now a dim, distant but very happy memory. Yep, you’re right they’re all back! First one home was Tallulah who walked in, sat down and promptly fell asleep,so far so good thought I, until that is she started to unpack and there was an explosion like the Persil advert, clothes and girls stuff everywhere. It was tidied, sorted and laundered, no problem. Sunday, the boys came back - so now I have Paul’s suitcase (still not unpacked) in the hallway where I’m sure it will stay until either I move it or he goes away again. I think it’s funny how he is always half packed as if he’s not sure how long he’s staying before he’s off again on his travels. I know some women have a problem when their husbands / partners / whatevers go away on business / holiday / whatevers, I however relish it when Paul goes away. We are together 24-7 and we can and do grate on each other.

The big bombshell however is the fact that he’s come back from a week away and has turned …. VEGAN! I think it’s a ploy to piss me off quite frankly,as if it’s not bad enough having to cook for all different tastes everyday he now throws this into the mix. I’ll keep you all updated as to how it goes!

Right I know I said I would update regularly and I haven’t, but, in my defence if I’d posted this last week when it happened, you wouldn’t have been able to read it for all the swearing I’d have used in it. Now I’ve calmed down a little so am able to post.

My other half Paul (Qui Gon Jinn to many), posted on the A4U forum regarding PC World going back to TD (!) and how TD were really, really helpful with the program when they were last active with them (yes, that was sarcasm) in trying to sort out commission issues which I can’t go into too much detail about here. Somebody who shall remain anonymous (at the moment, anyway) phoned the lovely peeps at the forum and asked for the post to be deleted, which they did. When we noticed it had been deleted we re-posted it, as you do.

The next morning I get a phone call from somebody being very abrupt wanting to talk to Paul (who doesn’t do mornings btw), when I said he wasn’t available this person was demanding to talk to him sometime today - I asked for his name and number several times and when he told me who he was I was not suprised. Mr TD (as I’ll call him) was quite agitated by the post and called it nothing more than a rant and even used Joe’s post below it to point that out. I told him that they (TD) are only happy when people post positive things about them and as soon as opinion swings the other way they demand posts get removed. He replied with ‘Well, I never expected to be talking to such an angry person this early in the morning’. How to make friends and influence people? I did feel my response was calm when I replied with ‘Excuse me, Who the hell do you think you are talking to?’ he had no answer but to hang up on me. I’m still awaiting an apology Mr TD, you have my number and my email address, I won’t wait forever, nor will we remove the post. Also, he said he’d spoken to Paul at least 20 times about the issues we had with PC World which it turns out to be just the once, you’d well remember any conversation you’d had with Mr TD.

Anyway, something else which has been bothering me (here we go you all say), is while at the most excellent A4U Expo or rather in the bar at some indecent time of the morning, whilst having an indepth conversation a young lady who works at a network sat down opposite me and started chatting - I thought it rather rude at the time as I was already talking to other people but answered her questions. She is very new to the industry so I stayed as pleasant as possible when she asked me if I’d been shopping. I replied that no I was actually here to attend the expo and she was very suprised and that as I was so close to London I’d have made the most of the opportunity to go spend ‘my husbands money’. For one - I’m not married, two - I have my own sodding money thank you very much, earned for being an affiliate and three - we’re not yokels, I actually live closer to central London than the venue was! Her boss could see she was peeing me off and gave her the nod to piss off and annoy someone else.

 That has been bubbling beneath the surface since - I feel better now I’ve got it out, so to speak.

I’ve had a good day so far, which is some kind of miracle for a Monday - my PC is working again thanks to Daniel from PC Help@Home.

RANT ALERT - RANT ALERT 

Been monitoring Woolworths for the past couple of weeks and I’ve noticed my epc has taken a nosedive. Upon further investigation it would seem somebody has been BNB on the program, we’ve asked Awin and they’ve told us that yes, a trial has started on a closed PPC group.

I’m intrigued that no-one has told us that has been happening, I don’t want to line the pockets of other affiliates thank you very much. I don’t want to be in the closed group, but I reserve the choice to not be in competition on PPC with a closed group. I’m very surprised and disappointed that Awin haven’t notified affiliates that this is happening and I look forward to their response.

I’ve posted the above on the A4U forum and I await Awin’s response with baited breathe - somehow I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with it!

Rant over, back to work.